Dior Collaborates With Works & Process at the Guggenheim To Create Dance Costumes

When Maria Grazia Chiuri took the position as the artistic director for Dior, she had no idea that she would be partnering with Works & Process at the Guggenheim in order to create dance costumes for their latest show Falls the Shadow, a 30-minute performance with video projections.

During the show, the dancers’ precise movements will be captured by several motion sensors, that will display 3-D images on the walls of the museum for a 360 degree experience. Daniil Simkin, principal of the American Ballet Theatre, says “It is difficult to explain our performance in words, as it is so unusual. The performance is being seen from above, and the audience is standing all around the ramps of the rotunda, [and] generative video projections have not been used with dance on this level before.”

The designs of the costumes are silvery, shimmery, formfitting outfits, with the J’adoir ribbon on each of them. “It was a little tricky [to design], as the materials had to have specific properties on the infrared spectrum,” Simkin says. “This performance features a lot of floor work and complicated lifts, which inevitably put restrictions on the costumes. [But the final product] truly embodies what we are trying to achieve with our project: simplicity and beauty, which transcends the sum of its parts to create something with artistic integrity.”